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Arizona soccer defeats Arizona State in double overtime

TUCSON—Arizona’s record scoring drought of 462 minutes was snapped in the fifteenth minute of play Friday against conference rival Arizona State. Red shirt junior Alex Davis connected with sophomore Amy Steiner’s throw in for her first goal of the season, bringing the Wildcats up to 1-0 in the 2-1 win.

Arizona (4-11-1, 1-4), who brought back last weekend’s up-tempo defense, led until the 86th minute when Arizona State (7-5-3, 0-4-1) equalized, and the game quickly moved into its first overtime, which went scoreless by both sides, and forced a second.

Freshman Alex Smith hit her first collegiate goal, and the game clincher, in the 106th minute of play, and was then tackled to the ground by her exuberant teammates as they celebrated their first win since September 25th against UC Santa Barbara.

The Wildcats were out-shot by the Sun Devils 17-14, but on the night, red shirt senior Devon Wharf picked up 7 of their on goal attempts. In a very physical match for both teams, Arizona had a season high of 22 fouls for the night, to Arizona State’s 12.

“It feels great,” Said co head coach John Galas of the win, “First off, I want to give full credit to ASU. They fought hard tonight, just like we knew they would. It was a close one, just like last year’s and I’m very happy that we came out on top. I’m very proud of our girls. They worked very hard for this win tonight.”

On breaking the scoring drought, Galas said, “It was pretty unlucky, and the ball just didn’t bounce our way for a while. It’s definitely great to get it behind us, and I give full credit to the girls and how they continued to believe in themselves.”

Up next, the Cats head out to the Bay Area to take on California on Friday, October 30 at 2 pm, and on Sunday, November 1st, the Cats will go up against Stanford at noon.